HUNTSVILLE, AL - Just after this month's excitement over a big-name Huntsville team entering the race for the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize, another voice piped up with a question.

Hey, what about us?

The voice belonged to Linda Bourgeois of Huntsville, one of the leaders of Team FREDNET, an even-earlier Google Lunar X team also based in Huntsville.

The Google Lunar X competition offers $20 million to the first team that lands a rover on the moon by Dec. 31, 2012 and beams pictures and data back to Earth, $5 million to the second team and $5 million in other prizes.

Dynetics Inc. is leading the Huntsville team announced last week in a press conference featuring Gov. Bob Riley. In all, 21 teams are now competing.

Team FREDNET isn't Dynetics, but it isn't small, either. Formed in 2007, the team has grown to more than 700 members across the world.

Its founder is Fred Bourgeois III, a computer scientist and 1980 Grissom High School graduate now living in California.

Bourgeois's innovation was opening his team to basically anyone who can contribute using the same sort of "open source" cooperation that created software such as Linux.

Interested people go to the team's website, follow a few steps to see if they fit and where, and then join up.

"We never thought we'd have as many people as we have," Bourgeois said Thursday in a telephone interview. "It thought we'd have, maybe, 20."

This isn't just a group of garage tinkerers, either. Among those working with the team, Bourgeois lists Dave Masten of Masten Space Systems, leader of the team that designed the winner of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.

"They are building our lander," Bourgeois said. "We hope to begin testing it later this year."

FREDNET groups in Spain and the United States both have working lunar rover models about to be tested, Bourgeois said.

Bourgeois said the team raised $600,000 this month to continue its quest.

The team will create a foundation to receive most of the prize money should it win the competition. That foundation will channel funds into programs advancing education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

A separate company, FREDNET Stars, will offer shares to investors who would also share in the prize, Linda Bourgeois said.

"We are working very hard, and we are very dedicated people. You can't stop us," Fred Bourgeois said. "This is what we love to do."